By The Strategic Partner · June 21, 2025
Introduction
You need a video, so you hire a “video guy.” He shows up with impressive-looking cases full of gear, talks expertly about lenses and frame rates, and produces a video that is technically flawless. The lighting is perfect, the image is sharp, the audio is crisp. And yet, it does absolutely nothing for your business. The common belief is that the person with the best camera equipment is the best person to make your video. My contrarian argument is that you’ve hired a brilliant technician when what you desperately needed was a storyteller, and the difference between the two is the difference between failure and success.
The Current State of Things
The democratization of professional-grade video equipment has created a massive pool of technical operators. These freelance “videographers” or “filmmakers” are often masters of their craft. They can produce beautiful images and clean audio. Businesses, impressed by their technical skills and slick demo reels, hire them to create corporate content. The relationship is transactional: the client provides the message, and the videographer provides the polished execution.
The Immediate Risk
The immediate risk is a beautiful, expensive video that completely misses the mark with your target audience because it lacks a fundamental understanding of their world. A medical device company hired a highly acclaimed filmmaker, known for his stunning visuals, to create a video for their new surgical tool. The video was visually breathtaking but filled with industry jargon and technical details that only an engineer could love. The target audience—busy surgeons—found it impenetrable and irrelevant to their primary concern: patient outcomes.
The Problem Is a Focus on the How, Not the Why
A technician—a videographer—is obsessed with *how* the video is made. They focus on the quality of the image, the smoothness of the camera movement, and the clarity of the sound. A storyteller is obsessed with *why* the video is being made. They focus on the audience. What are their fears? What are their goals? What problem are they trying to solve? What is their emotional state? A storyteller sees the camera as just one tool among many to solve the audience’s problem. A technician sees the camera as the point of the whole exercise.
The Problem Deepens When Technical Perfection Obscures the Message
The medical device company’s beautiful video failed because the filmmaker’s pursuit of visual perfection got in the way of the story. The dramatic, slow-motion shots of the device made it look like a piece of art, not a practical tool. The surgeons weren’t impressed; they were alienated. They couldn’t see how it would fit into their workflow. The filmmaker had created a love letter to the device’s design, but the surgeons needed a clear, compelling story about how it would make their job easier and their patients’ lives better. The video spoke to the company’s engineers, not its customers.
The Far-Reaching Implications Are a Disconnect Between Art and Commerce
This focus on technical execution over strategic storytelling creates a deep chasm between the “creatives” and the business objectives. It fosters a world where video production is seen as an arts-and-crafts project, separate from the real work of driving revenue. This leads to mutual frustration. The business leaders feel the creatives don’t understand the business, and the creatives feel the business leaders don’t appreciate their art. Both are right, because the model is broken. The goal is not to create art; it is to leverage the art of storytelling to achieve a commercial result.
The Counterintuitive Solution Is to Hire for Empathy, Not for Equipment
The solution is to change your hiring criteria. Stop looking at a production company’s gear list and start scrutinizing their discovery process. A true storytelling partner like Appture Digital leads with questions, not with equipment. Their key talent isn’t just their cinematographers; it’s their strategists and producers who are experts in customer empathy. They have the tools and processes to dive deep into the world of your customer and emerge with a story that will resonate on a human level. You are not hiring a camera operator; you are hiring a team of customer experts who happen to be brilliant filmmakers.
But Shouldn’t We Expect Technical Excellence?
Of course. Technical quality is table stakes. But it is the baseline, not the pinnacle. A true professional partner assumes that technical excellence is a given. It is the price of entry to the game. The real work, the work that commands a premium and delivers a return, is the strategic and emotional labor of discovering and telling a story that matters to other humans. Anyone can buy a great camera. Very few can wield it in service of a great story.
Final Thoughts
Your customers don’t care about your videographer’s new lens or their mastery of 8K resolution. They care about themselves. They care about their problems, their ambitions, and their needs. Hire the person who is obsessed with understanding your customer, not the person who is obsessed with their camera. Who does your video production partner know better: their gear, or your customer?
